Change USA

Today's other change is, of course, this:




Good luck to him. And while we're at it, where's our young, thrusting man of the people to guide our ailing country out of the mouldering pit of recession into a future fit for our children? Well?

State Of Things

Following a random workplace discussion about potatoes*, I have recently discovered that Iowa's nickname is the Hawkeye State.

I had no idea they were so into their cricket; perhaps a potential venue for a GRACC tour?

ThankyouWembleyandgoodnight!

* marginally less depressing than the FTSE at the moment...

Homeward Bound

As an appendix to my previous post, bravo!

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
"Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad."

Overheard #18, y'all, etc

This just in from our ever-vigilant, State-side roving reporter, Victoria Q. Sponge:

"I am NOT doing that again. One, it's gross and two, my legs are killing me."

MetalRex*

Billy Corgan has taken the latest incarnation of The Smashing Pumpkins on the road again for the first time since December 2000, ahead of the July release of the new album, Zeitgeist:

And ThePumpkins.net has some bootlegged recordings of the Paris gig:

Smashing Pumpkins; The Grand Rex, Paris

* long story...

Spiderman Of The Rings

Perusing some random music blogs this afternoon, I stumbled across a reference to someone called Dan Deacon and a link to an MP3 of a track called Snake Mistakes. Cool title, I think, wonder what this sounds like. Four minutes and twenty-two seconds of kids toy bleeps, slide bass, playground hand-claps and catchy-as-hell pitchshifted* chorus later, I am on the hunt for his album:

Hails from Baltimore, part of the Wham City art collective and composer of unpretentious, engagingly garish electronica who did his last tour by Greyhound bus. Utter lunacy - carry on...

* thinking about it, after that Battles track, is pitchshifting the new Provence? :)

Topgun Simmons

So I discovered the Kissing Suzy Kolber blog when it lost Best Sports Blog to Arseblog in the 2007 Bloggies awards*. Anyway, they're pretty funny, for merkins, so I bookmarked it. And now, their excellent, if somewhat near-the-knuckle, predictions for:

100 Future NFL Player Names

Particular highlights for me? Wutang Clanton, Scooter Cooter and Megatron Vampira (presumably a cross-dressing hard-running bomb-throwing base-stealing-oh-no-that's-the-other-ball-game quarterback). Pick your favourite.

* hmm, rather a lot of 'blog' in that sentence, I fear...